Autostrada A6 (Poland)

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Route of A6 motorway

Route of A6 motorway, in relation to other motorways

The A6 highway in Poland is a short (21 km) motorway that starts at the Polish/German border at Kołbaskowo/Pomellen (connecting to the German A11 autobahn), forms a southern bypass of the Szczecin metropolitan area, and terminates to the east of that city where it becomes the S3/S6 express road to Świnoujście. Note: There is some ambiguity as to where the highway will eventually terminate, as another 8 km of the S3/S6 road may be redesignated as A6, once improvement work is carried out. The highway is a part of the European route E28.

The motorway had its beginning as a Reichsautobahn built by Germany in the 1930s, as part of a planned autobahn connection between Berlin and Konigsberg in East Prussia (today Kaliningrad in Russia). All construction work on this and other autobahns was stopped by 1942. After the war the highway together with the surrounding area became a part of Poland, and the post-1945 borders meant that the need for a high-capacity road connection on that route disappeared. Even though much of the construction work was already done, it was not continued by the postwar Polish government. Of the portion that ended up on Polish territory, only a 29 km stretch east from the border with Germany was fully completed as a dual-carriageway autobahn (in 1936-1937 ([1]). Most of this stretch (21 km) became the A6 of today, the rest is signed as the S3/S6 express road. Further to the east, for another 30 km, one finds a partially completed, single-lane motorway, signed as a secondary road DW142 (part of it has been reconstructed as an emergency military road airstrip). Further east the road is no longer passable, but the earthworks left from the motorway construction stretch for about 100 km more, and are easily visible on satellite photographs.

Once the damage caused by wartime demolitions was (mostly) repaired, the highway did not see any significant upgrades or reconstruction until the 1990s. As a result, it fell far short of modern standards, and so on some maps it is not marked as a motorway (in whole or in part). Work on upgrading the highway to modern standards began in the late 1990s. At present, the first 14 km from the German border has been fully reconstructed. A further 7 km of the road, to the junction with National Road 10, is being reconstructed now and will be ready in 2007. An additional 8 km is to be upgraded at some future date and redesignated as A6.

In the long term, it is possible that a motorway along Poland's Baltic coast will be built. If that happens, the A6 will very likely form a part of it. However, at present not even preliminary plans for such a highway exist, and the completion of the A1, A2 and A4 highways, together with a network of express roads, has a much higher priority.